Eorling Mead Hall Planning/Discussion Thread

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Celuien

I'm sure he'll feel like at least explaining it to Stigend. Whether the fire-thing stays or not, though, will be up for debate.

Has anyone a clue, whether the kind of metal sheet -things that they put between the ovens and the walls just to prevent fires were already in use those times? In any given actual or fictional world we are trying to construct here...

[Celuien]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Has anyone a clue, whether the kind of metal sheet -things that they put between the ovens and the walls just to prevent fires were already in use those times? In any given actual or fictional world we are trying to construct here...

It seems that I've been drawn back into reseaching again. I looked around, but couldn't find specifics on oven construction. I did find some information that supports Garstan's plan, though.

Medieval kitchen

More details on Early English Architecture, including a brief section on the kitchen.

Quoted here:

At Goltho in Lincolnshire the fortified burh of a wealthy lord has been excavated. It comprised a bow-sided timber hall nearly 25 m (82 feet) long and nearly 10 m wide (32.8 feet); a smaller kitchen building set well away from the hall for fire protection; a long narrow weaving shed about 20 m long where the women of the burh would have stood at their looms for the daily labour of wool weaving; and a separate bower building.

Private defended burhs of wealthy thegns, ealdorman, and nobles could include both large timber halls and smaller stone buildings. The remains of a Saxon masonry building of 2.4 m (8 feet) tall stone walls have been excavated at Eynsford castle, Kent. A wood framed roof may have rested upon the walls, or they may have carried another wood-framed story above. This building had an excavated floor some 1.5 m (5 feet) below the ground, and was surrounded by a ditch 5 m (16 feet) wide and 3 m (10 feet) deep. Heavily fortified as it was it may have housed a powerful lord. On Lower Brook Street in Winchester was found the remains of a square stone building of at least two stories dating from about 800. It is part of a high status, secular, residential homestead.

At Sulgrave, Northamptonshire excavations have revealed the presence of a large 10th c timber hall, another lordly residence. Like many great halls it was constructed of closely set vertical timbers. At Sulgrave these sat upon a laid, mortar-less stone foundation. At one end of the great hall was a partition which led to a smaller room - perhaps a store room. A smaller detached timber building, which may have been a kitchen, was built outside. Another building on the site had stone walls more than 2 m (6 1/2') high - possibly a strong room or tower.

Anyone else have information on medieval construction methods?

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Celuien

It seems that I've been drawn back into reseaching again.
I did find some information that supports Garstan's plan, though.

the fortified burh of a wealthy lord... Private defended burhs of wealthy thegns, ealdorman, and nobles ... Heavily fortified as it was it may have housed a powerful lord. ...It is part of a high status, secular, residential homestead.
...another lordly residence.

I hope Garstan will stick to this. (Although all of those references didn't mention a separate kitchen... )

As I said to Celuien in a PM, "I surely see the idea behind the fire-protection. In a big castle with a wealthy lord you could afford that kind of things, and surely the well-being of their kitchen personnel was not nearest to their hearts, I suppose... Stigend surely thinks about the matter from his point of view: looking at the conditions of people having to do the work in the buildings and how to build economically..."

And then I started thinking whether I have just contradicted myself with my last post...

Yes, I know, that at least in Northern Europe the poor and the middle-class built their ovens tightly to the walls to give maximum warmth up to the 20th century. But clearly the wood had been free on the earlier times at least... So it must be labour-costly then? Just imagine the amounts of firewood needed in a Mead Hall! Well, as I said earlier, the Eorl need not to worry, what his subordinates do as they cost him the same every day, but surely if other projects are hampered by just getting enough firewood - or if it is a sparser commodity (you have to make long trips to find it or something) - it would be wise to try to be economical in that way.

But surely: Stigend's way of looking at the question stems from his experience of how things are done where he has been working. Garstan probably has a better argument if we look at it from the perspective of the safety. Stigend just looks at labour costs and the comfort of the people working in the buildings they construct...

Haa! This is fun! So far I have just managed with general education, but soon I will have to start searching for additional information too... A nice little disagreement between different schools of the building-trade!

[Celuien]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

I hope Garstan will stick to this. (Although all of those references didn't mention a separate kitchen... )

No. Not all of them did. Just the ones that were talking about safety precautions taken by the wealthy.

I'm working on a post now.

[JennyHallu]

Nice discussion: But Nogrod, I fear I must bring up a point of procedure. Any kitchen hearth in the middle ages would NEVER go out. If it goes out, you have to start with a cold hearth in the morning, and it can take hours to get it to cooking heat, especially since a kitchen fire is mostly coals. What you do is rake it over so that the coals are insulated, and there's no live flame, but that can still burn down a house.

Ever wonder where we got the phrase "Keep the home-fires burning"? A Middle-Ages hearth-fire isn't ever put out, and I think Stigend would know that. That's equally true, by the by, in a serf's hovel and a lord's summer palace. That's another reason a kitchen in a castle might be built separately: with a constant flame, heat against the building's walls in summer would make the building near unbearable.

[littlemanpoet]

Trying to catch up here: I'll just say this: post #889 is absolutely sensational! Well done, Jenny! I'd rep you but I have to spread it around.....

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by JennyHallu

Nice discussion: But Nogrod, I fear I must bring up a point of procedure. Any kitchen hearth in the middle ages would NEVER go out. If it goes out, you have to start with a cold hearth in the morning, and it can take hours to get it to cooking heat, especially since a kitchen fire is mostly coals. What you do is rake it over so that the coals are insulated, and there's no live flame, but that can still burn down a house.

Ever wonder where we got the phrase "Keep the home-fires burning"? A Middle-Ages hearth-fire isn't ever put out, and I think Stigend would know that. That's equally true, by the by, in a serf's hovel and a lord's summer palace. That's another reason a kitchen in a castle might be built separately: with a constant flame, heat against the building's walls in summer would make the building near unbearable.

Yes I know. I have indeed "lived" in a cottage like that in my childhood for short times - and been in old farmsteads in Finland later. The oven is left smouldering for the night and then in the morning it's relit or "woken up" by just raking the coals and adding more wood.

The idea of an outdoor oven / grill was just to solve the summer-heat problem - and during summer the oven outside wouldn't be any more colder than one inside in the morning...

And as I put Stigend to think to himself, most of the fires were caused by total carelessness or bad construction - after all, stone is not so flammable and even a hot stone-oven doesn't set fire to a wooden wall next to it just by itself when it is made large enough. Oftentimes the construction was made in a way that there was the oven, then there was a stone/brick wall built around it. Then depending on the size of the building, that stone/brickwall might be anything to ten yards on both sides of the oven - so that wall comes warm and heats the building, but from the fringe areas (from where it is attached to the wooden wall) it's not hot but only warm.

Okay. Just to add...

[Nogrod]

Even though I first decided not to, I still had to make a few checks...

This I found most enlightening to all of us who are planning putting up a kitchen in the Mead Hall...

The kitchen remained largely unaffected by architectural advances throughout the middle ages; open fire remained the only method of heating food. European medieval kitchens were dark, smokey, and sooty places, whence their name "smoke kitchen". In European medieval cities around the 10th to 12th centuries, the kitchen still used an open fire hearth in the middle of the room. In wealthy homes, the ground floor was often used as a stable while the kitchen was located on the floor above, like the bedroom and the hall. In castles and monasteries, the living and working areas were separated; the kitchen was sometimes moved to a separate building, and thus couldn't serve anymore to heat the living rooms. In some castles the kitchen was retained in the same structure, but servants were strictly separated from nobles, by constructing separate spiral stone staircases for use of servants to bring food to upper levels. An extant example of such a medieval kitchen with servants's staircase is at Muchalls Castle in Scotland. In Japanese homes, the kitchen started to become a separate room within the main building at that time.

With the advent of the chimney, the hearth moved from the center of the room to one wall, and the first brick-and-mortar hearths were built. The fire was lit on top of the construction; a vault underneath served to store wood. Pots made of iron, bronze, or copper started to replace the pottery used earlier. The temperature was controlled by hanging the pot higher or lower over the fire, or placing it on a trivet or directly on the hot ashes. Using open fire for cooking (and heating) was risky; fires devastating whole cities occurred frequently.

Beginning in the late middle ages, kitchens in Europe lost their home-heating function even more and were increasingly moved from the living area into a separate room. The living room was now heated by tiled stoves, operated from the kitchen, which offered the huge advantage of not filling the room with smoke.

Freed from smoke and dirt, the living room thus began to serve as an area for social functions and increasingly became a showcase for the owner's wealth and was sometimes prestigiously furnished. In the upper classes, cooking and the kitchen were the domain of the servants, and the kitchen was set apart from the living rooms, sometimes even far from the dining room. Poorer homes often did not have a separate kitchen yet; they kept the one-room arrangement where all activities took place, or at the most had the kitchen in the entrance hall.

The medieval smoke kitchen remained common, especially in rural farmhouses and generally in poorer homes, until much later. In a few European farmhouses, the smoke kitchen was in regular use until the middle of the 20th century. These houses often had no chimney, but only a smoke hood above the fireplace, made of wood and covered with clay, and used to smoke meat. The smoke then rose more or less freely, warming the upstairs rooms and protecting the woodwork from vermin.

The whole article can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen#Middle_Ages

I also found many notes that Celuien was referring to, like this one:

The medieval kitchen was where all the dishes for the castle's meals were prepared. It was usually set away from the great hall, where most of the meals were served. This was to prevent a fire in the kitchen from spreading to the great hall. Fires happened often because all food was cooked over a fire or in an oven. However, because the kitchen was built away from the great hall, food often got cold on the trip from the kitchen to the great hall. Thus, an enclosed passageway of wood or stone would be constructed between the two. This would help to keep out the wind and keep the food warm on the trip

I have bolded the important word: castle (and monasteries are talked at some texts too). I ran to this thing as I tried to find information from my copy of Viollet'Le-Duc's "Encyclopédie Médiévale" - all they talked was great castles...

PS. One thing we should consider is whether we are building an oven or an open fire hearth - or both?